


Soothing Scars

by SilverShortyyy



Series: The Soothing Scars Series [1]
Category: Ocean’s (Movies), Ocean’s 8 (2018), Ocean’s Eight (2018)
Genre: Angst, Drinking to Forget, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14938571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Debbie’s in jail and Lou finally feels the loss she ought to have felt that day when they broke apart. If Debbie isn’t in jail, then there was still a chance that things might right themselves? But Debbie is in jail and Lou lets the dam break.She doesn’t bother pretending this time. She doesn’t bother stopping the memories—or the vodka—either.





	Soothing Scars

**Author's Note:**

> soothing scars—the act of soothing scars; the act of alleviating the pain left in a wound only superficially healed

_“You tell me I’m your partner but you don’t even trust me enough to tell me what I’m getting into!”_

Lou doesn’t need a key to get into Debbie’s apartment. Then again, the woman hadn’t stepped in there for at least a few months. Lou knows she shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have practically stalked Debbie the past few months, but she thought it might come in handy some time, and it’s handy now.

Debbie was practically living with that guy, whoever he was.

_“But do you trust me, Lou? Do you trust me to know that whatever I’m asking from you isn’t too much?”_

_“Well how the **fuck** am I supposed to know, Deborah?!”_

Lou doesn’t cry over anyone.

That day, the tears were barely kept at bay.

_“Lou—”_

_“If you can’t fucking trust me enough to just be straight with me, to just tell me what you’re asking from me instead of— instead of playing some game with me—“_

She had thrown her things into a bag. She slowly sets her coat down on a sofa.

_“Lou!”_

_“Do you know what kind of shitty ass partner you are? You’ve never once told me exactly what you were planning when you asked me to join you—not once—and I always just went along with it because it sounds good and I’m your partner and whatever the **shit else** there is to use as a **fucking excuse**.”_

She had zipped the bag closed, then hauled it over her shoulder.

She opens a cabinet, and _goddamn that woman_ because everything is exactly the way Lou expects it to be, all Debbie’s things in the places Lou would bet them to be. Of course that woman would keep a stock of mostly vodka, and God knows Lou should be sick of vodka by now.

Lou takes a bottle by the head and pushes the cabinet closed. The door of the cabinet doesn’t really close.

Her boots are left at the threshold of the carpet, and of course Deb got a faux fur carpet.

Of course. _Of course_.

Why is Lou so surprised?

_“Lou—”_

_“I’m done, Deb!” Lou focuses her eyes, her glare, her anger and hurt at the woman who deserves it, at the woman who caused it. “ **We** are done.”_

Lou doesn’t let herself fall onto the sofa, but instead lets her back lean against it. She sits on the floor, on the carpet, and she opens the vodka easily enough.

She grips it by the neck, eyes trained straight to the wall.

Maybe he’s fucked Debbie on that wall. Maybe not.

A tear rolls down Lou’s cheek. She puts the mouth of the bottle of vodka to her lips and drinks.

One big gulp, two, three…

Lou remembers running away in early winter, her breath coming out in cloudy puffs in front of her. Had they not been so careless, they might have bought themselves a few more minutes to look a little less suspicious on the streets. But they could make do, they could make do. So they did, and while the sirens were blaring somewhere in the middle of the city, they were running over to the park.

_“Catch me, slowpoke!” Lou had snatched Debbie’s coat that night. Seeing as all Debbie wore underneath was a little black dress pressed very enticingly onto her body, Debbie had all the reason to chase Lou down._

_“Hey! Hey! I’m f-freezing here!” But again, Debbie stumbles upon trying to snatch at the hem of her coat._

_Lou just laughs, but this makes the act much more believable._

_Lou gets an idea, and she sees her eyes reflected back to her in Debbie’s warning gaze._

_“What-?”_

_Lou spins back around, sprinting off in the direction of the park while holding the coat up in the air._

_“Run faster, slowpoke!”_

_Lou laughs through the winter air, glancing back every now and then._

_Once, Lou turns back to see Debbie’s cheeks flushed, eyes grudging and lower lip bit down. Debbie’s fingers dig into her forearms, and had Debbie made the smarter choice of wearing a long sleeve dress tonight, Lou thinks she would’ve caught up easier._

_But Lou doesn’t mind the sight, especially with the way the citylights play on Debbie’s olive skin._

_The moment seems to come in slow motion, but Debbie comes close fast enough for time to have thawed as quick as it froze._

_Lou throws Debbie the coat, then Lou mirrors the smirk that forms on Debbie’s lips._

_“What were you looking at me all wide-eyed and open-mouthed for?”_

_Lou shrugs and winks, then turns to lead the way to the park._

It’s hard to forget the melody of Debbie’s laugh that night, floating over to her like bubbles carried by the sluggish, winter wind.

It sounded like a piano, like Christmas, like a birthday present but in late November.

Lou pushes the mouth of the bottle to her lips, desperate, needing it, her eyes closed against the sting but her throat seeming not to mind. She tells herself the tears are from the immediate succession of gulps of vodka burning down her throat, and maybe she’s right and maybe she’s not.

Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—

She yanks her mouth away from the bottle. Maybe the cold she feels down her shirt is the vodka, or maybe it’s her tears.

That night in the park, Debbie’s lips tasted like a shot of vodka before the thrill of a crime.

_“Here’s to another successful playdate!” Debbie says in Lou’s apartment, glass of watered down vodka between her fingers. “Even if we almost got caught!”_

_Lou raises her glass as Debbie does, Debbie sitting on the table and Lou sitting on the couch. Lou takes a sip of her champagne, because people drink champagne when the celebrate._

_“What’s with you and vodka anyway?”_

_Debbie laughs, short and light and airy, and Lou just raises an eyebrow while trying to water down a smile._

_“What about it?”_

_“You get ready with vodka and you celebrate with vodka. Why not champagne for a change? Or wine? Scotch?” Lou takes another sip of champagne, racking her brains for more kinds of alcohol that isn’t beer. Neither of them liked beer. “Bourbon? Gin and tonic?”_

_“Well, I like vodka.” Debbie says. She stands up from the table and stands in front of Lou, her figure towering over Lou but not quite dominating. “You could say it’s like my signature drink.”_

_“Watered down vodka?”_

_“When you’re drunk,” Debbie starts, falling onto the couch beside Lou. Barely an inch separates them; barely an inch of their sides don’t touch, and Lou slides her leg further when Debbie lands one thigh on Lou. “It tastes like vodka.”_

Lou finds herself walking over to the liquor cabinet, and maybe she downs another bottle or two, because everything becomes hazy after the first hastily drunken bottle.

Lou wants to shout, wants to damn Debbie for being so careless. Why is that woman so headstrong? _Of course_ the first goddamned guy she sleeps with is going to be a con artist. She’s Debbie Ocean; she has no chance at all of having any normal relationship.

Especially not now, not now that the _stupid insufferable woman_ landed herself in jail.

Lou didn’t want to know if Debbie really did it. Or if she got framed. Because it didn’t matter. No, Debbie deserved it. _Deserves_ it. After all they went through, after everything that had happened between them, Debbie had never once realized that maybe ‘I have something new for us to do’ isn’t the only damned way she could bring a new plan up.

Hell, if Lou admits it to herself, it didn’t even matter how Debbie brings it up. If Debbie even brings it up. Because Lou would just say yes, yes and yes and yes and yes and yes, because Lou can’t say no to Debbie, couldn’t possibly; but sometimes it felt like they weren’t partners anymore.

And of all things, Debbie should know Lou wouldn’t want to be anything less than a partner.

 _Her_ partner. _Debbie’s_ partner. Because Lou is Debbie’s woman through and through.

But was Debbie, Lou’s? Did Debbie even see Lou as worth the trouble? Or is it just a need to have someone run the course with her, follow her footsteps without saying too much of a word?

 _Damn you, Deb_. Lou thinks, and she thinks she rolls on the carpet, thinks she shouldn’t have gone to Debbie’s apartment, because everything is Debbie. The carpet, the sofa, the walls and the windows; the liquor cabinet and the little trophies, the bottles of alcohol, the vodka.

Oh God, the vodka.

The vodka.

Suddenly, Lou feels it kick in, feels the how many bottles she had downed far too quickly slam at her from the back of her head, and suddenly her lips taste of vodka that is too strong, too fiery, and it feels like it’s burning her from the inside out. Lou can’t breathe, and then the vodka is Debbie, Debbie on her lips and Debbie on her skin and Debbie in all the places they’ve ever been, and Lou wants to go to wherever jail that damned woman landed herself in and ask her, _choke her_ if Lou has to, because Lou didn’t ask for this when they first met.

‘ _Give it back to me._ ’ Lou wants to say, but there’s no one to hear it so she doesn’t say a word.

Her sobs are muffled by the faux fur carpet, and her hands press deep into her chest, as if willing the air to come back.

As if willing her heart to come back to life.

* * *

When Lou wakes up the next morning, she hurls herself over to Debbie’s bathroom.

When she looks at herself in the mirror, she’s a mess. But something in her eyes finally slap her awake, and she hates the truth but it’s there right in front of her, impossible to deny.

Because Debbie haunts Lou in her dreams, always an almost and never really there. Childhood lovers, they say, don’t fall into a love that can last a lifetime. Lou wishes that were true, because it’s Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, always Debbie, Debbie in the vodka, Debbie in a thousand cities, in a thousand cons, in foreign countries where they could heist together, in heaven and in hell.

But Debbie’s in jail and Debbie’s gone, and Lou’s alone now.

 _Tomorrow,_ Lou thinks, _I’m starting a new life._

A few years later, Lou finds herself making watered down vodka in a club.

**Author's Note:**

> Some lines at the end were inspired by a line from The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith):
> 
> “It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”


End file.
